From an enterprise's perspective -- the seller in this instance -- the sales office's inaccessibility may be unintentionally salutary. It limits customer volume at a time when the enterprise's infrastructure and staff may be unable to handle the volume. Of course, sales are lost, and customers must question why the sales staff is unavailable during peak daytime periods, but the enterprise rule could serve its purpose, at least as a stopgap measure during an unusual circumstance.

Later facts that came to light about Carbonite (a hosted provider of backup services) suggest that this rule may not be de facto in their case, but nevertheless a capacity-based trigger such as inbound phone sales inquiry volume remains an illustrative use case.

CRM and EnterpriseRules

CRM has many dimensions. The focus here is how customer interactions touch upon enterprise rules: how their behavior is affected by them, how customers influence enterprise rules, and what constraints should and should not be placed on the more dynamic forms of rule-based systems that will emerge in coming years.